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g>ome amertcan SXitalx 

AN ADDRESS 

DELIVERED AT 

RICHMOND HILL, NEW YORK CITY, 
ON JULY 5, 1915 

BY 
ISAAC FRANKLIN RUSSELL, LL.D., D.C.L. 

Chief Justice of the Court of Special Sessions 
of the City of New York 



\ 






By transfer 
The White House. 



§&ome American f seals 

3NDEPENDENCE DAY suggests the great- 
ness and grandeur of our country. It is a 
day for the statistician with his figures showing 
our enormous wealth in lands and manufactures, 
in railroads and shipping, in mines and metals. 
The historian today recalls the glories of the 
flag on land and sea for a hundred years and 
more; and the man of science rehearses the 
triumphs of peace and the heroic conquests of 
nature by those divinely called to reveal her 
treasured secrets to a waiting world. 

There are some who think that words are 
greater than deeds and that American achieve- 
ment has ever been less and lower than American 
ideals. 

Costly as was the war of the Revolution to 
England in the mere matter of territory lost to 
the empire, yet, from another point of view, the 
war was, even to the mother country, an instruc- 
tive and beneficent experience. For the success 
of the colonists in securing their independence 
taught English statesmen the true secret of im- 
perial cohesion. Britain then learned the lesson 
that she could secure to her empire the per- 
manency of its possessions only through a policy 
of justice to the colonists. Today, England could 
not hold Canada or Australia for a single month 
under such a scheme of taxation as was in force 
in America in 1776. 



Washington illustrates America as the land 
of liberty and self-government. Lincoln repre- 
sents America as the land of opportunity for in- 
dividual achievement, and as the home of a com- 
mon people who enjoy equality before the law. 

We have had noble leaders in the art of war 
by land and sea. Grant, at Vicksburg, set at 
naught all military traditions, and established 
new precedents for other generations to learn 
and follow. American genius, at Hampton 
Roads, in the encounter of the Monitor and the 
Merrimac, brought in a new era in naval war- 
fare with armor-clad battleships. 

Today we have our problems in civil govern- 
ment and jurisprudence which are as perplexing 
to our statesmen as any that confronted the 
leaders of past generations. 

The perils of unrestricted immigration by the 
yellow races of the Orient, and the poor and 
debased peasantry of southern Europe, have, to 
my mind, been unduly magnified. Compulsory 
education in the public schools will work out an 
assimilation of these foreign elements in due 
time. 

The burning issues of the day are industrial, 
fianancial and economic. Our reliance for their 
solution is not on fleets and armies but in Ameri- 
can reverence for law. Our constitutional system 
guarantees to all, irrespective of race, creed or 
birth, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness, and the equal protection of the 
laws. 

Americans believe in education for every son 
and daughter of the republic. Call the roll of 
the millionaire founders of American colleges 



and universities: Girard, Johns Hopkins, Leland 
Stanford, Rockefeller and Carnegie. Match 
these names, if you can, in the history of any 
other nation. In Russia less than fifteen per 
cent of the population can read and write, and 
in Germany and even in England, the higher 
education is regarded as the ornament and pride 
of the rich and noble, and not as the lawful 
heritage of the son of toil, or as within the hope- 
ful aspiration of the poor and lowly. In America 
the taxpayer, with cheerful munificence offers 
high school education, and, in the Western 
States, even a college training to all who will 
apply. This noble metropolis of New York City 
maintains institutions of college rank for young 
men and women where tuition is free: while its 
total annual outlay for the maintenance and ex- 
tension of public education reaches figures that 
are simply colossal, approximating forty million 
dollars. 

Poverty no longer obstructs the man of am- 
bition from advancing to a place in the learned 
professions. Wealth and ancestry no longer 
guarantee success to the half-educated and in- 
competent. The bold surgeon, in mad daring 
cutting up his human victim, may get a great 
name through luck; the sensational pulpiteer 
may win a wide repute through making vulgar 
the noblest theme that any speaker has; the 
trickster at the bar may prevail with court and 
jury by buying testimony in the open market, or 
sharing with the felon the spoil of crime. But 
all these men will fail at last; and their money, 
while it may corrupt their contemporaries, can- 



not purchase the plaudits of posterity, or raise 
them above their own low level. 

Education in America in these later years has 
advanced beyond the ecclesiastical influence by 
which it was long dominated and beyond the 
ecclesiastical curriculum to which it was so long 
limited and restricted. 

Americans believe in the dignity of labor. 
Occasionally we find a man who has a constitu- 
tion that will stand a great deal of rest. Some- 
times we see a young man who spends his time 
looking upward. But that will never enable him 
to climb the ladder of fame: he must add per- 
spiration to aspiration if he would reach the top. 

Rest is so generally preferred to labor, that in 
the long phrases of the Fourth Commandment, 
forbidding the pious Hebrew to do any work on 
the Sabbath, many neglect to notice the stern 
call to toil found in the words "Six days shalt 
thou labor." Labor is indispensable to the de- 
velopment of the highest type of human char- 
acter. The necessity for toil, under which 
humanity in general is placed, is a kind and 
merciful arrangement of a benignant Providence. 
Labor is the basis of wealth. But labor is gen- 
erally regarded as irksome and fatiguing, while 
leisure is welcomed as affording an opportunity 
to cultivate the graces and amenities of life, its 
hospitality, arts, letters and religion. But in a 
scientific no less than a moral sense toil is a bless- 
ing. There is, we know, a merciful ministry in 
evil, in sickness, bankruptcy and bereavement, 
teaching us lessons of self-control through the 
fierce discipline of sorrow. Ease, rest and con- 
tentment are strangers in these northern lati- 



tudes, and are found only in the lazy life of the 
tropics where the bread-fruit drops into the lap 
of indolence and the natives are drowsily dream- 
ing away the years. 

In toil we forget ourselves and the narrow- 
ness of selfish ambitions; in toil we forget our 
griefs and pains and think only of doing our 
present duty well. Employment of active facul- 
ties is so necessary to health and happiness that 
we demand it for the convict in the felon's re- 
treat, and in our visions of the hereafter impose it 
upon the saint who has made sure of his salva- 
tion and reached his heavenly home. 

In America we believe in getting rich, and 
in getting very rich. This is not ominous of 
danger to personal liberty and equality before 
the law in a land of universal suffrage, trial by 
jury and an elective judiciary. More to be feared 
than the swollen fortunes of our millionaires are 
those economic heresies which lead to discontent 
and envy of the rich and a crusade against wealth, 
despoiling the frugal of their savings. No man 
certainly can make a million dollars in a life 
time by laying brick or carrying a hod; but a 
million a year or even more may be exacted as 
reasonable pay for brain labor in organizing, dis- 
tributing and recombining capital. Scientific 
opposition to trusts has about vanished, many 
evils of high capitalization are seen to be vision- 
ary, and nobody is compelled by law to buy 
watered stock unless he wants to do so. 

Wealth may be entrenched behind constitu- 
tional barriers. Slavery was once so entrenched; 
but unpaid labor has disappeared forever. No 
one now doubts the constitutionality of an in- 



come tax or progressive inheritance tax. The 
rich man's palace, like the cottage of the poor, 
falls in the pathway of the right of eminent 
domain. And in many another way democracy 
is entering upon its just inheritance. 

Democracy and equality cannot mean that 
wealth should be robbed of its influence, and 
that majorities in voting bodies should confis- 
cate the savings of the poor. Nothing is more 
senseless than a crusade against wealth. My 
advice to young men is "Get capital. Do not be 
hard on the millionaire. Put yourself in his place 
as soon as you can." It cannot be a crime to be 
rich, or to employ labor at whatever price the 
laborer will take for his toil. Economically 
there is no such thing as over-capitalization; for 
the value of any business plant and establish- 
ment is not what it cost to set it up, but what 
it can produce through its earning power. The 
benignant spirit of our industrial organization 
is displayed in the fact that the miser who would 
accumulate selfishly, must, perforce of circum- 
stances, lend to the needy; and the mean man, 
who lives parsimoniously and makes judicious 
investments of his surplus, is a greater benefac- 
tor than the prodigal who scatters his substance 
lavishly. 

Americans learn from the example as well as 
the precept of great men. The man of letters, 
who says that he who writes for money writes 
with a false aim, is apt himself to exact the 
highest royalties. The lawyer, who tells his son 
just admitted to the bar, to be a priest in the 
temple of justice, or a courageous combatant, 
finding stimulus in the dear delight of battle, is 



sure to do himself justice when he asks for his 
retainer. 

After all, may we not usefully gauge the suc- 
cessful output of effort by its pecuniary reward? 
If a man says, "I am great," may we not ask 
him how much the public pays annually in proof 
of this? 

I do not hesitate to advise young men to work 
for money, and to accumulate capital. Raw 
material is necessary for the texture of the finest 
fabric. So, taking our country as a whole, and 
our national life as a single evolutionary period, 
we must agree that Americans have been wiser 
to master, first, the material conditions on this 
new continent. In this regard Carnegie and 
Rockefeller have been models of proper conduct 
in giving, first, undeviating attention to accumu- 
lations from our vast natural resources in oil 
and iron, and, secondly, in laying these princely 
fortunes on the altar of humanity in devotion to 
art, science, music and literature. 

In America we reverence the law. And this 
is our only hope. For law is here of democratic 
origin. In the Far East law is overlaid with 
sacerdotalism and is expounded by priests. To 
certain Europeans law represents the wishes of 
aristocratic and military classes. Sic volo sic 
jubeo is the motto of the German Kaiser; and 
his army is a royal, not a parliamentary army. 
Even in England we meet the doctrine that 
Parliament is omnipotent. Parliament can take 
A's property and give it to B; and Parliament 
has done this a hundred times and more. 

In the United States we have established the 
principle of judicial veto. Statutes that are un- 



constitutional are pronounced void by the courts. 
Magna Charta might be repealed by Parliament 
in England, but in America its provisions are 
embodied in the fundamental law; and the 39th 
chapter of this Great Charter, in medieval law 
Latin, is undoubtedly worth more to our citizens 
and to each of them than all the Greek and 
Roman classics. 

It is easy to get an erroneous view of law. 
Panegyrists have characterized the law as the 
perfection of human reason. "Her seat," says 
Hooker, "is the bosom of God; her voice is the 
harmony of the world; all things in heaven and 
earth do her homage, the very least as feeling 
her care, and the greatest as not exempt from 
her power." The modern evolutionist, in scoff- 
ing scepticism, ascribes the glories of creation 
to what he calls law, and joins the pious Montes- 
quieu in asserting the mystic doctrine of our 
present day faith that God himself is bound by 
law, the law of perfect righteousness. 

Socialistic agitators and those who lead the 
hosts of discontent in our great cities are con- 
stantly clamoring for more law — law to create 
capital, to raise wages, to reduce the hours of 
toil, to abolish competition, and promote virtue, 
economy and temperance. Much legislation is 
undoubtedly needed to repress monopolies, to 
tax swollen inheritances, to regulate public util- 
ities and to safeguard the life and health of the 
toiling masses. But the province of government 
has its frontier. An unjust tax on capital may 
only result in driving our millionaires into exile. 
Punishing the usurer and decreasing the lawful 
rate of interest may simply withhold from 



legitimate industry its reasonable credit and ac- 
commodation. Reducing the hours of toil may 
be only a new tyranny over laborers and a denial 
to citizens of the freedom of contract. Sumptu- 
ary enactments in the interest of morals and 
religion may and usually do prove to be either 
futile or mischievous. 

The socialistic tendency of the day may be 
the most impressive and significant sign of the 
times. Many astute observers so think. All 
competent critics are agreed that the annual pro- 
duct of land, labor and capital is not equitably 
distributed. But there is no occasion for alarm. 
One hundred men and more are now dividing 
and enjoying the fortune of old Commodore 
Vanderbilt. The sons and grand sons of the 
socialist leaders of a generation ago are among 
the capitalists of today. The descendants of 
wage-earners in forests and mines, in mills and 
factories have developed into the bloated bond- 
holders of our banks and exchanges. 

Chief among the rights of man is justice. 
Without justice we live under a degrading des- 
potism. If we only grant justice to the laboring 
poor we can reduce our contributions to charity 
one-half. Without justice alms is a mockery. 
Bread and fuel, doled out by a millionaire in 
ostentatious philanthropy from his store accu- 
mulated in fraud of others, only embitter the lot 
of the poor. Decisions of courts cannot be 
brought and sold like merchandise, a contract 
not to sue one's neighbor is void, and man's right 
to justice is priceless and alienable. 

To the Orientalist law appears as a divine 
revelation of eternal truth, guarded and ex- 



pounded by a priestly class, generally for money; 
to the war-ridden masses of continental Europe 
it is the will of a king, ruling by divine right; 
but to Anglo-Saxon freemen it has become a 
principle of voluntary action adopted for self- 
government by a democratic society. 

So law in a democracy is not the philosophy 
of what is eternally and divinely right, but rather 
the expression of what is best adapted to the 
present needs of society. The mission of law is 
not to work out the perfection of individual char- 
acter, but rather to secure personal liberty to the 
individual in his struggle for better things and 
his advance toward the ideal of human achieve- 
ment, a goal ever-retreating and which he can 
never reach. 

Europe today is an armed camp. England 
needs a fleet equal to all the fleets in Christen- 
dom. Germany demands three or four million 
soldiers to be ready for war at a moment's notice. 
France, with a decreasing birthrate, demands 
three years' military service of every young man. 
But England is in the throes of an industrial 
revolution; consols are at the lowest level, 
socialism triumphs in the House of Commons, 
the legislative power of the peers has vanished, 
while all the organs of public opinion demand 
increased appropriations for naval armament. 
Germany, meanwhile, maintains its military 
prestige by degrading the peasantry and sending 
wives and mothers into the fields to plant and 
harvest crops, and into the streets of the city to 
sweep the pavements and tend the switches of 
the trolley cars. 

"Arms and the man" was the theme of Homer 

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and Virgil. Our modern halls of fame devote 
most of their niches to those who fight and kill. 
A Roman triumph was the most gorgeous of 
barbaric pageants. It represented the lust of 
conquest which never ceased to dominate the 
Eternal City till the world was at her feet. But 
Rome's best legacy to our present age was her 
imperial law — that law which subdued the fierce 
barbarians who overran the empire, that crossed 
deep seas to distant continents, and that con- 
quered where the legions were overthrown. 

Today the cost of armaments has reached 
figures unparalleled for greatness. Fifteen mil- 
lion dollars is the cost of the "Arizona," our new- 
est battleship. Seventy-two per cent of our 
national revenue goes for war-like preparations. 
And still we are unprepared. 

But we may still hope. Behold our ex-Presi- 
dent, the gallant Colonel Roosevelt ! Aye, there's 
a man. What eulogy can overstate his virtues, 
his intense passion for justice, liberty and right, 
his resplendent patriotism and glowing en- 
thusiasm for humanity? It was these qualities 
that made him hope when all the world despaired, 
and enabled him to bring out of the darkness 
and gloom that had fallen on Manchuria the 
glorious light of the peace of Portsmouth. 

I love to see him pictured everywhere — in the 
garb of a Rough Rider, as a citizen representing 
the strenuous life, or in the robes of an Oxford 
don. They say he shot a man at Santiago; and 
when the orders came to him to take a hill, some- 
where in San Juan's wide field, he did not stop 
to ask its name, but promptly drew his sword, 
rallied the Rough Riders at his command, stormed 

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the citadel and drove the Spaniard from the 
heights. How heroic was the gallant colonel 
then, a belted knight indeed, with spurs and 
epaulettes, in army boots and blazing uniform! 
But I love to think of Roosevelt not as the 
demon of war in Cuba, but as the angel of peace 
in Manchuria, walking in quiet majesty between 
two angry armies of a million each, lined up 
for murderous duel, disputing to the death the 
empire of the East. Roosevelt in the history 
of Russia and in history of Japan is the most 
majestic figure of the centry, and heralds to a 
war-weary race the dawning of the morning 
"when the war-drums throb no longer and the 
battle flags are furled, in the Parliament of Man, 
the Federation of the World." 

Americans believe in peace, progress and pros- 
perity; in liberty, equality and fraternity; in jus- 
tice and due process of law. Moreover, they 
breathe the atmosphere of hope; they shout the 
ringing note of optimism, and hail the joy of a 
better day to come. We Americans are like the 
Puritans of New England, and the prophets of 
old Israel: we feel that we are the chosen people 
of God — chosen to teach constitutional freedom 
to all the nations of the earth. 

There are battles for the right yet to be fought 
— and fought, let us hope, not on fields of blood, 
but in the arena of reason. The safeguards of 
liberty must be re-established and strengthened, 
the accumulations of honest industry must be 
sheltered from rapacious raids; and the humble 
hoard of the poor and the funds held in holy 
trust for the widow and orphans must be re- 
leased from the grip of the grafter. America 

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has in the past taught mankind great truths 
about the moral order of the world; her future 
task may be to teach, by precept and example, 
great lessons in the art of peace, in the diffusion 
of sound learning and in the establishment of 
social justice among men. 

This social evolution, like the evolution of the 
common law, is to follow the pathway of eco- 
nomic necessity. The man of the sword must 
give way to the scholar with his book. In a 
democratic republic, based on manhood suffrage, 
questions of policy must ultimately be settled by 
reason and intelligent human action. The day 
of force among nations must some time pass 
away. At least, let us so hope and pray. 

Today we are citizens of a world-state. Mr. 
Carnegie has given ten million dollars for the 
cause of perpetual peace; the last forensic 
triumph of Mr. Elihu Root was in making a plea 
for justice before a court of nations. Today we 
note the hurricane of death, the waste of anarchy, 
the tragedy of horrors that accompany the 
European war. Let us hope for the future that 
whatever troubles may arise in the family of 
sovereign and independent states, in place of 
the old barbaric cry "To Arms" our children and 
their descendants will hear and heed the peaceful 
summons of a world-tribunal, "To The Hague." 

America's true policy is to pursue the pathway 
of peace, to arbitrate such international con- 
troversies as may arise, and to rival our sister 
nations only in the arts of commerce and the 
orderly evolution of advancing civilization, based 
on justice and the equal liberty of all. 

There will be no lack of leaders. A kind 

13 



Providence that has presided over the destinies 
of the American commonwealth, the God that in 
due time raised up Washington and Lincoln and 
Grant, will in these later days bring forward the 
successors of McKinley, Roosevelt and Wilson, 
that our fathers shall not have lived in vain, and 
that constitutional government shall never perish 
from the earth. 



14 



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